She smiled. “When we are married, do you intend to call me by both of my names?”
“Only if you ask me very nicely.” He leaned in close. “I think I’ve loved you since the moment I found you on that balcony, having picked the lock and found your way from the light to the darkness.”
“To freedom,” she said, softly.
“That night, in your bedchamber, I jested about rescuing the princess from her tower—”
“You did that,” she interrupted.
He shook his head. “No, love. You rescued me. You rescued me from a world without color. Without light. A world without you.” He brushed a thumb over her cheek. “Beautiful, perfect Felicity. You rescued me. I wanted you from the start. It was only a matter of time before everything—everything—was second to me wanting you. To me keeping you safe. To me loving you.” Tears filled her eyes as he continued. “And all I wanted was your happiness. Mine was nothing compared to yours.”
“But my happiness is tied to yours. Don’t you see?”
He nodded. “I can’t give you Mayfair, Felicity. We’ll never be welcome there. You’ll always have gone slumming, no matter how rich we are.” He paused, lost in thought, and then said, “But I’ll give you everything else. The wide world. You have only to ask.” His beautiful eyes glittered in the sunlight. “You rescued me from the past. You gave me a present. And now . . . I wish you to promise me the future.”
“Yes,” she whispered, unable to keep the tears from spilling over. “Yes.”
He stole her lips in a wicked kiss that left them both breathless, and Whit grumbled, “Find a bed, will you?”
Felicity pulled away, a blush high on her cheeks, and said, “Just as soon as we find a doctor.” She moved to leave the yard, to head for the street.
“Wait,” Devil said. “I could swear that you insisted we marry down there, in the darkness, while you were saving my life.”
She smirked. “Well, you were quite cold and are suffering from a head wound, so I wouldn’t be so certain that you heard what you think you heard.”
“I’m certain, love.”
“Women do not typically propose to men. Certainly not women like me. Certainly not men like you.”
“Women like you?”
“Wallflower spinsters. Forlorn Felicitys.”
“Lady Lockpick, did you or did you not ask me to marry you?”
“I believe it was less asking and more telling.”
“Do it again.”
Her blush turned to flame. “No.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Please?”
“No.” She pulled away from him and kept walking.
“So traditional,” he scoffed. And then, after a moment, he called after her. “Felicity?”
She turned back to find him on his knees in the brightly lit courtyard. She took a step toward him, already reaching for him, thinking for a moment that he had fallen again.
He clasped her outstretched hand and pulled her closer, until her skirts were billowing around him. She froze, staring down into the face of the man she loved as he said, “I haven’t much. I was born with nothing, was given nothing. I haven’t a name worthy of you, nor a past I’m proud of. But I vow here, in this place that I have built, that used to mean everything and now means nothing without you, that I will spend the rest of my life loving you. And I will do all that I can to give you the world.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want the world.”
“What, then?”
“You,” she said, simply. “I want you.”
He smiled, the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen. “You’ve had me since that first night, love. Now tell me what else you want.”
She blushed.
Her heart pounded when he removed the band from his ring finger, immediately transferring it to her thumb, following the kiss of warm silver with his own kiss, to the metal and then to her knuckles. There would be a wedding, no doubt, but this moment, here, in this place, felt like ceremony, blessed by sunlight and air.
And when the husband of her heart rose to his feet—towering over her with broad, beautiful shoulders, his hands coming to her cheeks, cupping her jaw, tilting her face up to his—Felicity gave him the kind of kiss a queen of Covent Garden gave her king.
When it was over, he turned to the rooftops, and Felicity’s gaze followed his to the rooftops around the warehouse yard, where dozens of men stood at scattered intervals, rifles at their sides, grins on their faces, watching.
She blushed, and the blush turned to flame as he called out, as strong as ever, “My lady.”
He kissed her, long and slow and deep, until the men assembled pounded their feet and shouted their congratulations down into the yard, creating a magnificent, cacophonous echo reverberating around the buildings, so thunderous that the tremors in her toes sent wild pleasure through her—pleasure that turned to fire when he pulled her close and whispered at her ear. “Your world awaits, my love.”
Epilogue
Three months later
Felicity came to Devil’s side in the courtyard of the Bareknuckle Bastards’ Covent Garden warehouse as the final steel wagon left the drive, Whit at the reins.
Devil’s arm pulled her tight to him as the September wind blew, sending her skirts billowing around them, and they stood, King and Queen of Covent Garden, until the clatter of the horses’ hooves faded into the night. When it was gone, replaced by the voices of the watch on the rooftops above and the men who had spent the night working to get the shipment out for delivery, she tilted her face up to his and smiled. “Another day done.”
He turned to face her, his hands cupping her cheeks, holding her still as he kissed her, long and deep, until they were both gasping for air. “It’s late, wife,” he said. “You should be abed.”
“I prefer my bed with you in it,” she teased, loving the little growl he gave at the words. “Call me wife again.”
He leaned down and pressed his lips to the soft skin of her neck. “Wife . . .” He scraped his teeth at the place where her neck met her shoulder. “Wife . . .” Nipped at the curve there. “Wife.”
She shivered, her arms coming up around his neck. “I don’t think I shall ever tire of it, husband.”
He lifted his head and met her eyes, his own dark in the moonlight. “Not even when you remember that you married into the darkness?”
The wedding, performed by special license days after Felicity had rescued Devil from the ice hold, had been perfect . . . and the opposite of everything Felicity had once imagined. Instead of a staid affair at St. Paul’s Cathedral, attended by half the contents of Burke’s Peerage, it had been a lively, cacophonous celebration at a different St. Paul’s—a stone’s throw from the Covent Garden market.
To Felicity’s parents’ chagrin, it had been performed by the rookery’s vicar—a man who knew his ale and drank it well—to a congregation packed to the gills with the Bastards’ men and their families. Arthur had been there, of course, and Pru, along with a collection of tarnished aristocrats who had taken Felicity, Devil, and the whole of the Faircloth family under their collective wing—after all, the Duchess of Haven had pointed out at the wedding breakfast that morning—scandals must stick together.
Only Grace had been missing from the celebration; she remained in hiding while the Bastards worked to find Ewan, who had disappeared after leaving London months earlier. A package had been delivered before the ceremony from Madame Hebert, however, and inside, Felicity had discovered a pair of perfectly tailored buckskin breeches, a beautiful white shirt, a pink and silver waist-coat that would rival any frock in Mayfair, and a tailored topcoat, black on the outside, with pink satin lining. Along with the clothes, a pair of tall, leather boots, fitted over the knee.